


The Ensuite

by KatieComma



Series: Finding Out [5]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 01:35:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14989892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieComma/pseuds/KatieComma
Summary: And finally to cap this series off... How did Jack and Mac find out about Jack and Mac?Or, more accurately when did they start to figure it out.





	The Ensuite

**Author's Note:**

> For everyone who asked what happened in the ensuite from Riley and Bozer's parts of this series.

Mac’s skin was on fire. The acid had soaked through his shirt, and his chest felt like it was being cut open and the skin ripped from his body. Dragging Jack by the hand, he led the way into the small ensuite attached to the hotel bedroom they’d been working in.

“What the hell?” Jack growled, suffering the same agony Mac was.

“The bomb was booby trapped,” Mac informed him through gritted teeth as he tried to bear the pain that was lighting up his nerve endings. Mac tore the buttons from his shirt in his haste to get it over his head, careful not to let the fabric touch his face. “Sulphuric acid.”

“Acid?” Jack whined, ripping his own shirt off over his head, imitating Mac.

“Sulphuric acid acts like any other burn,” Mac started explaining, it made it hurt less somehow, gave him something to focus on. He leaned into the small glass enclosed shower and turned the water on cold. “It’s a thermal reaction, and just like any burn it will keep heating up the skin layer by layer, deeper and deeper.” Mac dropped the rest of his acid-soaked clothes to the ground. “We need to cool the burn to keep it from traveling down to the muscle and-” At this point the burn hit a particularly sensitive nerve cluster and Mac cried out, the pain dropping him to his knees.

“You alright?” Jack called out through his own painful moans, grabbing Mac’s arm to help him up from the floor.

Mac nodded. “Clothes off,” he choked out, regaining his footing. “Into the shower.” Mac climbed into the small enclosure and stood under the cold water. The effect was immediate. He could feel the chemical reaction between the water and the acid, creating more heat, but the volume of the cold water was enough to wash it away faster than it could cause any more damage.

 

When Jack pulled the elastic of his boxers away from his skin, he would have sworn he could feel his flesh tearing away with it, the pain was so intense. He cried out, and as quickly and carefully as he could got rid of the rest of his clothing. Luckily his hips were as low as the damage had gone, but it was more than enough.

Because of where they’d been situated when the booby trapped bomb had spat at them, Mac had been splashed across the chest, but Jack had gotten most of it across his forearms and stomach. And god damn did it hurt like a sonofabitch.

Jack followed Mac’s instructions and stumbled into the shower after him. Mac leaned against the tiled wall, eyes closed, and the look of relief on his face was tangible as the water cascaded down his chest where splotches of white had already appeared from the acid. They hadn’t even been two minutes getting to the bathroom and there was already noticeable damage. Jack was afraid to look down at his own skin. 

There wasn’t much room in the small space, and Mac was taking up most of it. Jack stood back, waiting for Mac to finish washing the acid from his own skin.

A searing bolt of agony seized through his stomach causing his muscles there to clench and he cried out, bracing himself against the wall. He wanted to hit something. Somehow pain always felt less when he was hitting something.

He felt Mac’s hand close around his wrist and pull him toward the water. Jack took two staggered steps into the spray, standing face to face with Mac. The cold that enveloped him was the best thing he’d ever felt. Like stepping from a hot Texas summer day into frigid air conditioning. Once the cold washed away the burning on his skin he realized he’d been in so much more pain than he had even realized. He leaned, grateful and relieved, against the cold glass at his back, resting his head against it and sighing out.

Jack’s arms still tingled with pain, but he barely noticed it compared to what he’d just been feeling. Eyes closed he felt Mac’s hands take his wrists, and draw his arms up into the cold firm stream of water. There wasn’t much space, and Jack’s hands had nowhere to go but to rest on Mac’s shoulders while the water cleansed his forearms, washing the rest of the pain away.

 

Mac smiled as he watched the look of relief on Jack’s face. They were fine. He’d fixed it. Maybe they’d have a little scarring, but nothing serious.

That’s when things started to feel uncomfortable.

Danger averted, agony no longer clouding his mind, Mac realized exactly what was going on.

He’d seen Jack naked before. Hell, they’d even showered together before. But that had been army showers: A showerhead for each man in a large tiled room. Not this; Not fighting to share the same stream of water, standing one foot away from each other.

Mac knew that to be safe they needed to spend another fifteen minutes in the shower; To ensure that the cooling had completely stopped the burn, and that the acid had been totally washed away. Suddenly fifteen minutes seemed like an eternity.

Jack’s hands rested on Mac’s shoulders, his fingers loosely gripping the skin there so his forearm burns would be in the spray of the showerhead. Mac had put those hands there. 

Jack’s eyes were still closed with the bliss of being pain free as he leaned back against the glass.

Mac’s eyes were drawn to the patches of white where the acid had burned Jack’s skin. He told himself he was doing a damage assessment as his eyes moved lower. There was a speckling of spots on Jack’s lower abdomen, but the majority of the burns had occurred across his stomach and arms where the white patches were larger and brighter. The arms were the worst though.

Hopefully it wouldn’t scar too badly, but Jack wouldn’t mind if it did. He’d always been so proud of his scars. Mac looked over the damaged body in front of him. He’d seen most of the scars before since Jack often partially stripped to show them off when he was several beers into a good night. A neat and clean line on his bottom right abdomen from being stabbed in Equador; A particularly nasty starburst looking thing up near his right shoulder, a result of some debris from a bomb blast in Iraq; The small pinprick scar from the antenna in Canada; And then one Mac had never seen as his eyes wandered down below the white acid burns: a semi-circle at the top of his thigh.

“At least it didn’t ruin our pretty faces,” Jack’s hot breath cut through the frigid air of the shower, brushing Mac’s face. They were so close.

Mac looked up to find that Jack’s dark eyes were open and he was grinning. Probably trying to play off the fact that he’d just caught Mac giving him a once over.

 

 

“Look at you man,” Jack said, looking down at Mac’s chest. Jack hadn’t been paying attention before because the pain wouldn’t let him focus. “You look like a Dalmatian.” He wasn’t sure what he’d just caught Mac doing, looking down between the two of them, but Jack guessed he’d been looking over the burns to make sure it wasn’t worse than he’d hoped.

“We gonna be alright?” Jack asked, trying to confirm his suspicions.

Mac nodded, but didn’t say anything, and Jack wondered if he was still in pain.

“You ok man?” Jack asked.

“Fine,” Mac shook his head and looked up into the shower spray, spitting a small jet of water out against the wall.

“Alright, well we best get outta here and-” Jack turned to leave the shower, but Mac grabbed his arm.

“Wait,” Mac said, “Fifteen minutes is standard for an acid burn. Fifteen to twenty minutes under cold water. You need to make sure the burn has been neutralized and the acid is completely washed away.” 

He tugged Jack toward him, more as a suggestion than a command, but Jack settled back against the glass wall and let his hands fall to his sides.

“Make sure you keep your arms up in the water,” Mac said, reaching out to take Jack’s hand, but seeming to think better of it and just pointing at it instead. “Since they weren’t covered, they got the worst of it.”

Jack lifted his arms and winced as something chaffed at his wrist.

“Here,” Mac offered, gently undoing the leather cuff that was still on Jack’s wrist and letting it fall to the floor of the shower. A thin line of acid had seeped under the leather, and now the cool water washed it away.

“I’ll have you know that leather and water don’t mix,” Jack said, “I’m gonna need a new one.”

“I always just assumed you had, like, a whole drawer of them at home,” Mac joked, smiling wide, and resting Jack’s hand back on his shoulder again.

That smile meant everything was going to be alright. That sly smile that crept from ear to ear and lit up Mac’s eyes always meant everything would be alright. Jack counted himself lucky that he was often the cause and focus of that smile. There was something special about being able to make Mac smile and laugh. He didn’t do those things for just anyone. 

Jack rested his other hand back on Mac’s shoulder, using the other agent to support his injured arms.

That’s when things started to feel awkward.

In addition to the fact that he’d caught Mac looking him up and down, now they were standing less than a foot apart, warm bodies in the cold spray of water, meeting each other’s eyes with no words between them. And the look in Mac’s eyes wasn’t just a friendly banter kinda look. It was a look Jack had seen more than his fair share of times when he was using his best moves on a filly at the bar.

Jack squeezed Mac’s shoulders briefly, two quick pinches like he’d done so many times before; A gesture between buddies. But this time Mac’s soft skin was slippery with wet under his fingertips and he immediately cursed himself because it felt more intimate than he had intended. That intimacy sparked something down low in Jack’s body, something that felt uncannily like the start of something sexy. He didn’t even think that could happen in a cold shower.

 

Mac wasn’t sure what was happening. But he was sure there was something happening. The air between the two of them was hot, despite the icy water, and Jack’s fingers kept shifting and moving on Mac’s skin; Subtly feeling across his slick wet shoulders.

Urges were starting to surface in Mac, urges reserved for bedrooms behind closed doors. And with those urges the stirring of something that sent a nauseous feeling plummeting to the pit of his stomach which then sunk lower and became something else.

Mac couldn’t be sure if it was just him, or if that look in Jack’s eyes meant that they were both caught up in the same strange new idea growing between them.

Just when Mac thought he might say or do something spurred on by his body, Riley burst in through the door.

“Woah!” She immediately yelled and turned back out into the bedroom. “What the hell guys?”

Jack’s arms jerked back from Mac’s shoulders, and he returned them to his sides, a guilty look on his face.

“Riley!” Mac yelled over Jack’s shoulder. “Don’t touch anything!”

“I could say the same to you guys,” Riley replied, standing in the doorway, one arm leaned against the doorframe, her back to them. “What the hell are you guys doing in here? I thought you had a bomb to diffuse.”

“I mean in the bedroom,” Mac called out. “Don’t touch anything in the bedroom. The bomb was booby trapped with Sulphuric acid! Don’t let anyone touch anything!” His voice echoed hollowly off the tiled walls of the shower and hurt his ears.

Riley stayed in the doorway, her back still to the shower, and yelled out at whoever else had come into the room with her to back out and stay clear.

“Alright,” Riley said, after the orders had been handed out. “But that still doesn’t explain this!” She waved her hand behind her to indicate the two of them sharing the shower.

Jack was staying uncharicteristically silent during the exchange.

“We have acid burns,” Mac explained, “we had to wash them off. Another ten minutes in here before we’re clear.”

“That’s going to be a problem,” Riley said, “because the bomb you were in the middle of diffusing, has 8 minutes left on the countdown.”

“Activating the booby trap must have accelerated the timer,” Mac thought out loud.

“Tell me what to do,” Jack said, “You stay in here and I’ll go take care of it.”

Mac shook his head, and turned his focus from Riley back to Jack. “If the burns aren’t cooled completely they’ll keep burning down into the muscle and then the bone. It’ll cause permanent damage. We can figure this out.” Then he noticed that Jack’s arms were back by his sides and commanded: “Arms up. Unless you want a shaky gun hand for the rest of your life.”

Jack held his arms up, and once again for lack of space, rested them on Mac’s shoulders.

Mac closed his eyes and took a shaky breath, trying to clear undignified thoughts about his partner from his head, which was proving especially difficult because of the physical contact they were sharing.

“Ok Riley,” Mac said, opening his eyes. “Go out into the hall. It’s about the right time for maid service, so find a cleaning cart and get two pairs of rubber cleaning gloves; Heavy duty ones. The bomb is too heavy for you to carry by yourself, so you and Boz are going to put the gloves on and carry it in here. Then I’m going to tell you how to disarm it.”

“What about the acid all over the place?” Riley asked.

“Keep your shoes on and walk slow,” Mac instructed. If it just got on their shoes it wouldn’t be able to get to their skin. “Make sure you don’t touch anything else, don’t even brush against anything. If you do that you’ll be fine.”

“Ok, I’ll be back,” Riley said, bolting from the doorway and calling Bozer’s name.

Thinking hadn’t done much to calm Mac’s body, and he just hoped against all odds that Jack wasn’t going to look down between them. Mac pressed his head back against the wall of the shower and puffed out a hot breath.

 

Jack heard footsteps behind him, but the only view he had at the moment was Mac leaning back against the shower wall. A sight that was suddenly rousing something in him that he was trying like hell to ignore. They were partners, nothing more, he attempted to convince himself. When you worked that close with someone long enough your mind could get muddy, mixing up different experiences and emotions.

“Alright Mac,” Riley’s voice echoed through the room. “One bomb, as ordered, where do you want it?”

“What the hell is goin’ on in here?” Bozer’s voice joined the cacophony of sounds bouncing around the room: Riley’s voice, the sound of spraying water, squeaking footsteps on tile and the beeping of the countdown clock. Jack craned his neck to try and see more of what was happening.

“Acid burns-” Mac started.

“Yeah, Riley explained it to me,” Bozer said. “You guys know this suite has two bathrooms right? With two totally separate showers?”

Jack knocked his head back against the glass. “Thanks Boz. Wasn’t thinkin’ real clear while my skin was tryin’ to melt off,” he replied.

“Like in Raiders?” Bozer asked excitedly, suddenly distracted.

“Hey guys,” Riley cut in, “can we cut this short and diffuse this bomb that’s got about five minutes left on it?”

“Yeah,” Mac said, concentration creasing his face as he leaned forward to look through the glass over Jack’s shoulder, planting his hands on the glass on either side of Jack's head.

“Alright,” Jack shifted uncomfortably, trying to lean back into the glass as far as he could. “There it is. This is gettin’ super weird now.”

Mac ignored Jack, and continued to look over his shoulder. Jack could feel Mac’s breath misting his right shoulder with heat in the cold space. Jack slipped his arms under Mac’s to try and keep them in the spray as he’d been instructed. All in all it felt way too much like an embrace for Jack’s comfort level.

Jack couldn’t focus on the instructions that Mac was giving to Riley, despite the fact that the voice was issuing commands directly into Jack’s ear. Instead Jack concentrated on trying not to be aroused as all get out. Mac’s shoulder was pressed against Jack’s collar bone, their bodies slick against each other. It was all Jack could do to keep his hands stretched out when they wanted to do so many other things.

 

Mac could barely give Riley direction. He was actually worried he was going to lose his train of thought and tell her the wrong thing, blowing them all through the ceiling. 

Pressed up against Jack so he could squint through the glass was the only vantage point that would let him see what he needed to see, which was uncomfortable and unfortunate. As much as he could, he kept his hips pressed backward against the wall of the shower. If he got much closer Jack would know exactly how their whole situation was affecting him. As it was he was trying to keep himself shielded from Bozer and Riley at the same time using Jack’s body. And despite all that distracting him, he had to focus himself enough to guide Riley through disarming the bomb in front of him.

Step by step Riley did as she was told. There were a few moments that gave Mac too much time to think, and his mind wandered back to the smell of Jack’s body next to him. Jack never wore aftershave or cologne into the field; Those kind of things gave you away when you were trying to sneak around somewhere or generally be forgotten. But there was a smell to Jack’s body that was all his own. After spending time in close quarters with someone in a war zone where showers were few and far between you learned certain things about a person. Their own personal odour was one of those things.

More than once during the process, Riley had to snap Mac out of it and back to the task at hand.

Finally she had removed all of the obstacles in her way and cut the last wire.

The countdown clock went dark, and stayed dark.

Everyone let out a sigh of relief.

Mac realized he hadn’t leaned back away from Jack, and did so, putting that space back between them. That space that only fifteen minutes before had seemed like no space at all now felt like a football field.

He couldn’t help but think that Jack was going to notice his arousal, and then things between them would never be the same.

“I’ll grab you guys something to wear,” Bozer offered, leaving the bathroom.

Riley followed, ranting on the way. “This is the second time this year I’ve had to see Jack’s bare butt. Once was more than enough. Zero times was more than enough…” her voice continued as she left the room and though Mac could hear the sound of it he couldn’t make out the words.

Bozer left some clothes hanging on the towel rack for them.

“That’s it, free to go,” Mac said, motioning for Jack to leave the shower first.

Jack nodded to him, and thankfully, didn’t look down, just met Mac’s eyes.

Was there something unspoken there? Was it: let’s never talk about this again? Was it something else? Mac was never good at reading people when strong emotions were clouding his judgement, and his body was still racing with want.

Jack stepped out of the shower with that determined stride of his and Mac watched as he walked across the room and grabbed his clothes; The shift of muscle across Jack’s lower back where yet another scar rippled the skin; The strong muscle of his legs that flexed when he shifted his weight. 

Where had this want come from? Had it built up over time? Or had it been there right from the beginning. Mac couldn’t say. Only that it was there now and he was going to have a hell of a time trying to make himself forget it.

Mac stayed in the shower for another minute, turning his back to Jack, hoping that without his partner’s presence in the small space and the cold water still racing down his torso that his body would settle down. Echoed across the room, he heard Jack mumble something under his breath, something he hadn’t intended Mac to hear: “Jeeze Louise, I could really use a cold shower right about now.”


End file.
